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Things to Think About

I just read that the average Canadian is just $200 per month off not being able to pay their monthly bills. This is a really scary thought if a percentage of these Canadians don’t have ample savings to fall back on if they suffered a job loss.

I wonder how the average Canadian company would rate on this type of measurement?

Let me just see how our, not so awesome at this moment, brothers and sisters across the border are doing with their money?

Americans now have the highest credit-card debt in U.S. history

Hmmm, not much better off it seems. Even when you consider that the USA is experiencing one of it’s lowest unemployment rates in the last 70 years, the average punter is still racking up huge credit card debt.

United States Unemployment Rate  1948-2017 

US unemployment rate edged down by 0.1 percentage point to 4.1 percent in October as the number of unemployed persons decreased by 281,000 to 6.5 million. It is the lowest unemployment rate since December 2000. Since January, the unemployment rate has declined by 0.7 percentage point, and the number of unemployed persons has decreased by 1.1 million. Unemployment Rate in the United States averaged 5.79 percent from 1948 until 2017, reaching an all-time high of 10.80 percent in November of 1982 and a record low of 2.50 percent in May of 1953.

 

Americans have $1.021 trillion in outstanding revolving credit as of  June 2017. This beats the previous record in April 2008, when consumers had a collective $1.02 trillion in outstanding credit revolving credit.

Now, what I’m pretty sure of at this juncture in my life, is that I haven’t been thinking like an average person for most of my life. I always tended to think in the terms of want-to’s vs have to’s.

I don’t like the fact of having to get up and go to work or go to a job because I have to pay my bills or my debts. In my early working years, I strived to keep my debts low both personally and businesswise. I wasn’t always successful but thank goodness for us entrepreneurs there’s a such a thing as “limited liability” when setting up a company. This way you can protect your personal assets and escape financial ruin in case something goes horribly wrong in your business.

My thoughts have mostly been centered around; “How long could I last if I had no more income?” When you ask this question of yourself and the same of your company (if you have one) then you start thinking differently about taking on unnecessary debt and start using the logic of “cash is king.” You start to remind yourself of some old adages like. “If I can’t pay cash for it then I can’t afford it.”

How effective would you be in making decisions if you had no immediate financial pressures? Would you say no to certain customers or clients if you don’t like working for them or with them? Would you be nicer to family and friends if you weren’t so stressed about having to meet so many financial obligations?

Is there any way you could make your life easier, more simple? There’s magic in simplicity, you know. If you can’t pay cash for your car then why buy it. Why should you help make finance companies richer? Why not learn to do some light maintenance yourself? You might find it’s fun to actually be able to mend or repair something on your own and save money at the same time.

You might find It’s fun to bootstrap in your business too. I enjoy knowing that my business is running lean and mean. It’s also fun to know that your business could operate successfully for another year, two years, five years, ten years or even twenty years without actively having to bring in new money. It’s great to make new decisions about how you will spend your time. You can decide to work on building up a new project or not. You can travel without having to think and worry about how your business is doing while you’re gone. You can decide to spend time on developing a new skill or learning a new subject.

How much more carefree would your life be or could your life be if you were to focus on simplicity? Reduce your consumption habits so you can save more in order to build your wealth and create the right habits to maintain your new growing position.

We all have the intelligence to create a wealthy life, we just need to get excited about the possibilities.  The first step is to be proud and happy with what we’ve got. Take care of the things we have, mend them and repair them for the time being and start a habit of saving. Once we’ve taken stock of our spending habits and cut out unnecessary spending. It’s time to start looking at our investment mentality. I’ve written about my approach in this “an-investors-thoughts-revisited”

Let’s not fall into the trap of the next big bust which seems to be on the horizon considering we’ve got so many people living just on the brink with so much consumer debt. All it would take for most people to have huge issues would be a marked uptick in interest rates and a small catastrophe like a job loss to start the downward spiral.

Companies that are operating without ample capital and lack of market vision could quite easily become redundant. The stock market has only been rising which is not necessarily because companies earnings are increasing. The S&P 500 is now experiencing its second-oldest Bull Market on record without at least a 20 percent drop in the S&P.

What all this says to me is tread carefully and be ready to pounce on a worthy investment when the opportunity arises. And the opportunity will always arrise over time if you’re patient and prepared (with ample savings).


Dominic Kotarski – International Consultant | Author | Coach | Trainer | Speaker

Dominic Kotarski
Dominic writes, speaks, inspires, motivates and teaches on the most important aspects of your business including Sales, Coaching, Team building, People Management and Business Development and on some rare occasions, his political views. Get weekly access to his blog & training videos FREE by subscribing.  CLICK HERE

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Dominic Kotarski

Dominic Kotarski is an author, coach, sales trainer and Founder of Sales Success Academy. He's personally inspired, coached, trained and managed thousands of salespeople and business owners in 11 different countries. You can find him in Vancouver, Canada where he lives, works, runs, ski's and spends most of his free time with his family.

This Post Has 3 Comments

  1. Thanks Dom. I enjoy your thoughts and educational insights. Very timely and relevant topic.

    1. My pleasure Jono, I know you’re always pursuing higher personal and professional peaks!!

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